


The Lord of Silence

by orphan_account



Series: The Lord of Silence [1]
Category: Full Tilt - Neal Shusterman, Neal Shusterman
Genre: Age Gaps, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Canon-Typical Violence, Deal with a Devil, F/M, Gore, Immortality, One-Sided Attraction, POV Male Character, The Devil is a Sneaky Bastard, Unresolved Sexual Tension, not tagging this as underage because Blake doesn't yield to Cass's advances
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 05:56:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11052726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In which Blake takes Cassandra's deal.Lesson one: Becoming a god takes some getting used to.





	The Lord of Silence

**Author's Note:**

> So recently I reread Full Tilt, which has been languishing on my shelf since I first bought it back at a middle school book fair. It was actually much better than I remember it! To the point I feel like I have book hangover, of the kind only writing fic can solve.
> 
> I have three fics planned for this series - two one-shots and a drabble collection connecting them. However, since the final scene for this one-shot is substantially different than the first two, I think it's more appropriate to split this into two chapters. The first chapter will focus on Blake and Cassandra, the other on Blake and Quinn.  
> Another note: the Wheel of Ra in this universe didn't start falling apart before Blake entered The Works. Minor detail, but Blake's reasoning hinges upon it.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Song: Little Pistol - Mother Mother

 

_And now I found brimstone in my garden_  
_I found roses set on fire_

" _Build them how? Build them on the spirits of others you'll keep trapped here?"_

_She answered me with no shame or remorse. "Nothing comes without a price, and no one come who doesn't choose to be here."_

She gave my hands a hard squeeze. "Your brother, for instance."

Quinn had looked me in the eyes and told me he didn't care if he died here. He had cried once death really stared him in the face, roped onto that mummification table, but…

Control. Peace. That's all my brother and I had ever been looking for. And if I took my seventh ride and made it out, I would be leaving him – him, and Maggie, and Russ, and all the other countless souls trapped here – to never know it.

Plenty of people must realize the true nature of the park and accept it, like Quinn. Others won't figure it out until it's too late, like the boy I had saved from the guard, like Russ. I could build a park for all of them, a place without The Works, a place to safely contain the Quinns of the worlds' adrenaline benders, a place without whatever it is was that broke my friend's soul upon the torture rack Cassandra calls a Ferris Wheel.

Or I could leave them all to her.

 _She doesn't know what happens if you finish the ride!_ I thought. But, as I quickly reminded myself with stark horror, I didn't either.

Hell didn't collapse upon the Devil's head just because Dante and Virgil made it out.

I felt her passionate longing and cold calculation wash over me as the seconds ticked by, clashing inside me like opposing armies, and then…nullify. Balance. Felt her nails slide up to my biceps and dig, the way I'd seen Maggie fearfully clutch onto Russ. The way an old boyfriend would clutch onto Quinn, or to me.

As if- _as if_ , ha- reading my thoughts, Cassandra loosened her grip, her smile suddenly sad and, dare I say, apologetic.

If she had been talking to anyone else, I would have told you it was just the lighting.

I smiled back. "Deal."

_And I found Jesus, what a liar_

* * *

One of the first things I do, after pulling everyone out of The Works, is try to wash the stamp off my hand. Which is easier said than done, especially with Cassandra still barraging me with demands and compliments both sarcastic and seemingly sincere.

"Next you'll be telling me you want to install a representative democracy."

"Ours works well enough, back in the real world," I say.

Real world. My mother, my brother in a coma in the back of an ambulance, my own body who knows where.

I was- no, _am_ \- being practical. And yet, wasn't that how I defended flaking out of Columbia?

Well, Quinn, maybe you were right after all.

Cassandra simply snorts and falls back into the empty pit behind me with a loud splash, the water pink and frothy, flooding the room with the scent of roses and cotton candy.

The splendor of my new room puts both King Tut and Louis XIV to shame – it looks as though everything has been carved right into the walls of a diamond mine. I have to keep the lights dimmed so the shine doesn't melt my eyes like ice cubes on the surface of the sun.

My bathroom is Roman in miniature, with huge pools that advertise either freezing cold or boiling heat, the shimmering walls and floors sanded down to a marble smoothness that's currently biting into my knees as I scrub my hand with a boar's hair brush. Despite the clouds of humidity that magically part before they reach my face, the water is a cozy warm, the kind that makes the phrase "sleeping with the fishes" almost desirable. Cassandra, of course, has chosen the cold pool. I took Latin once, I should know what it's called. _Frigidarium_ – yeah, that's the word.

Bubbles crawl across the floor, soaking my jeans.

 _My strength is my will,_ I repeat my new mantra, scrubscrubscrubing until my shoulder burns and my skin is brighter than Cassandra's hair.

"It won't work."

"Of course it will."

"Not unless I say so."

"Well, then why don't y –" My mouth snaps shut as I look over my shoulder and see her bare breasts pressed against the rim of the pool, accentuated by a frame of wet red hair. I squeeze my eyes shut, scrub harder, focus on the pain of the bristles dragging along my skin like jagged teeth. "What are you doing?" I manage to choke, voice embarrassingly high.

"Taking a dip." I hear the water slosh, slap onto the floor – my throat bobs. "You're free to come and join me."

You could probably grill hamburgers on my face right now. I dunk my hand again, eyes still shut, focusing solely on the spiral I can still feel glowing a harsh white against the flush of my skin. "I think I need an adult."

Waterfall. The soft pad of feet. "I am an adult."

If anyone's up there, I could use some wayward lightning right about now. But, being realistic here, if there is any god, I'm pretty sure the park is far out of their jurisdiction.

The padding stops. Scrubscrubscrub, don't look up. It's another trick, another game.

"Blake," she says, her voice echoing not against the walls of the room, but the walls of my mind. "Look at your hand."

I have brushed down to the bone. The flesh that encircled the mark is now jagged and curled; blood paints the otherwise sickly-white bones in thin streaks.

And stamped upon the bone that connects to my middle finger is her mark.

A hand under my chin, pulling me up to meet her gaze. She isn't naked at all – a red and white polka dot bikini hugs her frame, her hair fluffy, dry, and capped with a large yellow sunhat. A devilish grin, and she drops into the pool before me, cradling my ruined hand in her own. A whine crawls out of me as she brings it to her lips, giving my bones a soft kiss.

Instantaneously, my skin unfurls and knits back together, without an ounce of pain. When it's finished, the mark throbs scarlet for a moment, then falls into slumber again.

My face is still hot enough to melt steel. Cassandra laughs, an ugly sound. "You act like you've never seen a pretty girl before."

"Not one that I thought was about to jump my"–voice fails at _bones_ as I yank my hand away, balling and un-balling a fist. All there, all functional, good as new – I loose the breath I'd forgotten I'd been holding hostage.

"You came onto me first, if I remember correctly."

I reply, "At the bottle game?" far clearer and self-assured than I thought it would. "That was all you."

"That kiss on the shore?" She taps my nose with a perfectly-manicured nail. "That was all you."

"It didn't mean that."

Cassandra folds her arms across the edge of the pool, resting her head at my knees. "Oh, I'm sure."

"I could look it up in the dictionary, if you want."

She laughs. I expect her to mock me for being immature, to try to make me squirm, but instead she pushes off the wall and starts to backstroke away. Then she asks me what my favorite fairy tale is, yelling over the loud slap of her arms against the water.

I knit my eyebrows, "What?"

"There was a movement in psychology where they thought your mental illness was reflected in your favorite fairy tale. So" – sitting up atop the water as if it were solid ground, stretching her arms out before collapsing with a bone-cracking _smack_ –"what's yours?"

I shrug. "I've never given it much thought."

"Favorite Disney movie, then?"

Dang, that's a tough one. I haven't been to the movies since spring break, when my mother practically begged and Quinn practically dragged me away from my desk to enjoy the sun for a little bit. "Uh… _Finding Nemo?"_ If that said anything about the state of my psyche, it was probably that I was, in Quinn's words, as "anal" as Marlin.

She might be onto something.

The look on my face must have given me away, because she starts to laugh again, and I wish I push her off into the water, grab her by the hair and hold her underneath until she's pounding on my chest like an emergency exit door.

Cassandra screams as a wave breaks over her, sputtering as she flails her way out of its grasp. She pulls back a wet curtain of hair, glaring daggers. "Remind me to dunk your hand in salt next time," and I can tell that she means it.

"Of course, of course." And I'm sure my grin only enrages her further.

She said I was to be her equal, the park's brain to her soul, but what powers did that actually give me? She'd said I could craft rides of my own, matter manipulation on top of my apparent pain-blocking, but how much? Everything I had done before, I had assumed was simply an allowance—and running through my mental catalogue again, it's still hard to tell her influence from mine.

Feet pad, no, stomping towards. I scramble to stand, but she's not heading towards me. She's heading instead towards the huge French doors that lead into the palace she calls a bedroom. ("Oh, just something modest," to be exact.)

"Mine is _Märchen von einem, der auszog, das Fürchten zu lernen,_ by the way," she says, yanking open the doors. "I'll see you after dawn."

"Where are you going?"

She grins over her shoulder. "The Ferris Wheel."

And then she's gone.


End file.
